Final week

I Added the last changes... a couple of smear frames and some little tweaks.
And Another AM quarter is gone.
The next quarter is about advanced acting... woooo!
I hope that I will have a mentor as good as Randy!

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La Tigre et la Neige

The french version is out... with a new poster. There's also a new site... but they didn't put us in the credits!

Neige

The whole time, almost final

My assignment is almost complete... I finished the inbetweens, added some squashes and stretches in the cheeks and head so that the mouth doesn't seem sticked on the face, added hair and overlap in clothes, cleaned the dirtier drawings, pushed a little more some mouth shapes and added some distortion-multiple drawings-smears in some quick movements.
This 3d approach with various layered passes forced me do tons of scans... I should think more in 2d!

ciao

Emanuele

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The whole time, inbetweens

Weekly update... I'm finishing the partial drawings I left behind, drawing some mouth shapes and starting with inbetweens.

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Gestures, two sketches

My brother with guitar.

The whole time thumbails

Thumbnails for the last phrase.

The whole time - breakdowns

Today I added almost all the breakdowns and the timing charts.
I also changed something from the last week... some hands positions and the last phrase when she says "don't talk to me"... I think now it's more convincing!

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AM thumbnail

scribble scribble

In the frying pan

doodles...

Waiting for the train

Milano, Lambrate, waiting room.

Life drawing

And this is Silvia.

A pair of sketches from Mantova

Two pages of sketches I draw during the "Mantova Festivaletteratura", in september.

The Whole time, reblocking

I reblocked my scene from the beginning since Randy gave me a lot of suggestions to make it more dynamic and to better fit the line of dialogue. I still have to add some secondary key drawings... especially anticipations and overshoots before beginning the inbetweens.

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The Whole Time_Planning

Here are some sketches and thumbnails.

Santori

I updated the Santori-man: now in the end he says "santori timmme" and not "Santori timh".

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The whole time!

I blocked my new assignment.
The audio clip is from Mrs Doubtire... I watched this movie searching for a good line from Robin Williams or from the kids instead I found this one by Miranda, the wife.
This time I'm a hundred percent traditional... no digital drawing like Santori time... no wacom (and no undo)! I need more control and paper is still no.1... (however as you can see I have to improve my pencil test system:( ).

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Some more Santori

This week I worked on the inbetweens... I adjusted many slow-ins and slow-outs, especially on the head as Randy (Haycock) suggested.
I also put all on 2's and sometimes on 1's, to keep it more alive.
In the end I sketched a rough background: the Santori-studio!

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Il libro 2

The villain! A summoned shadow...

Il Libro

Studies for a short film in 3d (that we've never finished), based on a Lovecraft short story.

Devastation Pose

Devastation... another one from AM class 1. The "actor" is my brother.

sitting sketch

This is my collegue Gabriele, caught in his classic pose...

Tai chi

Tai Chi sketches from AM, class 1. Thanks to my dad for the reference!

Santori again

He needed some clothes!

Santori

sketchbook

Sketches from some months ago... AM, class 1.

Make it Santori time...

I finished this week work on my Santori assignment... I refined my blocking, especially I've removed from the animation a lot of stuff, above all some expressions and some extra poses that weren't necessary and that made the animation less clear. All the feedback I've received from the students, from Doug Dooley and Randy Haycock, was about the fact that the more a character is "cool", the less he moves... and so I've tryed to make it more subtle... there's only one pose for the body, one head turn, one gesture and the glass.
The other issue is to keep the model in shape, keep the volumes (grazie Mauro!): for me this is a very difficult part of hand drawn animation, that in 3d doesn't even exist.
Now the character is less similar to Jafar, because he speaks with a lot of squash and stretch and it's awesome but he doesn't fit to my character. So I think that I added some Lee Van Cliff, some System of a Down and maybe some of me (you always appear in your works!).

Santori

Thumbnails: push

Thumbnail drawings for an Animation Mentor assignment from class 2, bodymechanics... I was the "actor" behind these poses :)

sketch: exhausted

A page of sketches from my first AM class...

LaTigre e la Neve, Alias and Ubik conference

Next week we will give a lecture in Milan on the vfx of La Tigre e La Neve... you're invited!

Another quick doodle

Here another one... like yesterday I didn't plan anything...

saluti!

Calvin and the tentacle

Here's another one... always done with Js GreasePencil tool.
It's very straight ahead: I haven't planned anything! There were no tentacles or boxes at the beginning; I've started with a fast run and continued doodling.
My inspiration is a clip by Jason Ryan I've seen some weeks ago ... I like the way he makes Chicken little slides. There's also some Calvin personality inside.
Thanks to Josè and Mauro for the instant feedback!

Calvin and the tentacle

Doodling with Js_Greasepencil tool

This evening at work I had 30 empty minutes so I started doodling with Js_greasepencil tool, the script by Jason Schliefer that let you draw and animate directly in Maya...
The character is just a little inspired by Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes.

Calvin doodle

AM students blogs

Now we have A LOT of blogs... happy reading:


AM Mentor Blogs

Jason Schleifer's Blog

Ethan Hurd

Justin Barrett

Bobby Beck

Carlos Baena

Victor Navone

Mark Behm

Mike Walling

Mike Thurmeier

Cameron Miyasaki

AM Class 3 Blogs

David Andrade

Aja B.

Rick Blankenship

Brad Bradbury

Robert Casumbal

Irene Chung

Philippe Duvin

Ernesto Esteo

Lee Fieldhouse

Landis R. Fields IV

Carlos Fins

Hugo Garcia

Matt Gaward

Daniel Gerhardt

Gianmichele Mariani

J Gibson IV

Jeremy Hopkins

Stu Jones aka Vyntax

Anthea Kerou

Jeff Kim

Adam Levin

Jimmy Lyons

David Martinez

Matt Moriss

Adrian Ng

Brian Nicolucci

Michael Plaisance

Eric Scheur

Kenny R

Rebecca

JP Roberts

Phil Rogan

Ryan Scott

David Sloss

Barry T. Smith

Mike Stern

Phelan Sykes

Ali Tezel

Jazz Tigan

Thomas Vanlicht

Sara Wade

Dieter Wagner

Nathan Walpole

Doodlesquad

Derek

David Leighton

Peter Starostin

James Schneider

Dan Segarra

Matt Kelly

Kenshi

Emanuele Pavarotti

Makomako

AM Class 2 Blogs

Mel Milton

Dylan Forman

Christophe DeGregory

Jamie-Lee Bury

Paul Sinclair

Jason Campbell

Jeff Rapess

Otto Schnurr

Eric Stratte

Adam Strick

Keith Patterson

Sean MacNeil

Nenad Mitrovic

Will Kistler

Tomislav Tesla

Traci Plagmann

AM Class 1 Blogs

Aaron Schultz

Alex Lehmann

Aaron Scott

Derek Bledsoe

Ryan Summers

Justin Weg

Megan Hobby

Chad Moore

Sean Dicken

Jocelyn Cofer

Mike Feil

Chris Zurbrigg

Freddy Burgos

Kate Forrest

Pamela Miles

Max Perelman

John Sung

Santori Reblocking

whew... what a busy sunday! I always finish my AM assignment ten minutes before the deadline!
Now my eyes aren't fresh so I can't judge in a clear way what I've done, but I'm quiet satisfied considering that I have still 3 weeks to work on this.
From last week I changed some body postures and the gesture: now there's less movement because as my mentor Randy Haycock told me (and my fellow student Sternio gave me the same suggestion), cool characters don't move much, and he's cool!
For the face I used Jafar from Aladdin as a reference, without the arabian style. I love the cartoon villains!

Santori reblock

Vegetables Sketches

Thumbnails drawings for my Animation Mentor Miss Stewie animation.

The first idea was a bit different: she was drinking a cup of tea... very english. Then I changed my mind on the run... a nouvelle cuisine "misterious" plate could be better for that fussy reaction!

carletto

It's out! It's the last commercial on which I've worked, for Italian market only. That funny character is named Carletto and it has been created by the Jim Henson guys! Yes... the muppets! In fact the previous commercials with Carletto have been done with a real puppet animated by 6 animators at the same time. In this commercials there was some shots that couldn't be done with a puppet and so we have worked on it in 3d! So two shots are live action and all the others are in 3d.

The director is Dario Piana, and Ubik vfx worked at the CGI: I've worked on the animation part and the model and shaders are by my collegue Roberto Clochiatti with. The compositor is Josè Sala and on the set in Romania there was Nicola Scarpinato.

The shots are really fast but we've worked hard on them and we're happy for the result, also considering the difficulties provided by the fact that we had to create a performance believable and similar to the puppet appearence and behaviour.

Watch Carletto